... IO-Mega has sinced replaced ZIP with the REV drive, but it is similar tech, to be sure.

Yeah, similar in that it was still possible to have a disk corrupt somehow and break the drive. Then break any other disk that was inserted into the drive and break any other drive used to attempt recovery of data from the broken disk. As a previous comment said, like a hardware virus. May be why you can't get REV bits here in UK any more.

Just to stick my boot on here:
If your house had a problem with bugs and insects coming in through the cracks and open windows, would you:
a) Move to a different country that had fewer bugs and insects,
Or
b) Patch the holes and cracks as best you could and get something to zap the beasties if they did get in?
I think you can see where the analogy is going.